Wednesday, March 02, 2016

The tides are changing on the American college campus. Authoritarian administrators and faculty members and pearl-clutching campus social justice warriors are finally being challenged by a new brand of radicals poised to reclaim the American university and return it to its original function and purpose: expanding young minds.

At his 2013 Harvard commencement address, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg reminded us that “a liberal arts education must not be an education in the art of liberalism… In the 2012 presidential race, according to Federal Election Commission data, 96 percent of all campaign contributions from Ivy League faculty and employees went to Barack Obama.”

This new revolution isn’t precisely locatable on the political spectrum. Many disaffected liberals and otherwise apolitical people are irritated by censorship and interference from college administrations, too.

You might have been seeing an increase in High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) enforcement on Route 50 while you travel to and from Washington, DC or surrounding areas. The Maryland State Police College Park Barrack is responsible for this stretch of highway. The Troopers assigned to the College Park Barrack have issued over 350 citations and warnings this year to HOV violators.

We have investigated several traffic collisions in the HOV lanes involving motorist who were not authorized to travel in the HOV lanes. With your help, we can reduce fatal accidents, serious injuries to motorist and continue the flow of traffic on our roadways by following the HOV rules;

The HOV lane on Route 50 is enforced 24 hours and 365 days a year.

The HOV lanes are HOV 2+, meaning two or more people must occupy the vehicle.

An occupant is any person who occupies one seat in the vehicle (i.e. Pregnant mothers count as one occupant, and an infant in an infant seat counts as one occupant). Pets and mannequins are not considered occupants.

Buses are allowed to travel in the HOV lane regardless of occupants.

Motorcycles are allowed to travel in the HOV lane regardless of occupants.

Plug-in electric vehicles (PEV) are also eligible. However, a permit obtained from the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) is required for these vehicles to drive in the HOV lanes without the requisite number of occupants. Please get your valid permit and display it so you’re following the rules.

The HOV lanes were designed as concurrent flow, meaning they are not physically separated from the general use lanes.

A violation of the HOV lane carries a $90 fine and one point against a driver’s license for first time offenders and for each subsequent offense. Additionally, if the driver’s violation of the HOV designation leads to a crash, the driver will be subject to three points.

This is probably the BEST written comments regarding minimum wage that I have come across.

Kudos to the originator of this excellent piece. It's spot on!

Hamburgers...

Low military pay was not mentioned in The State Of The Union speech. Just increasing the minimum wage was ..Hamburgers or Minimum Wage For those fast food employees striking for $15 an hour; let's do some math. At $15 an hour Johnny Fry-Boy would make $31,200 annually. An E1 (Private) in the military makes $18,378. An E5 (Sergeant) with 8 years of service only makes $35,067 annually. So you're telling me, LaTisha McBurgerflipper, that you deserve as much as those kids getting shot at, deploying for months in hostile environments, and putting their collective asses on the line every day protecting you.

Here's the deal, Baconator, you are working in a job designed for a kid in high school who is learning how to work and earning enough for gas, and hanging out with their equally goofy high school pals. If you have chosen this as your life long profession, you have failed. If you don't want minimum wage, don't have minimum skills.

Icahn, in a letter to House and Senate leaders, said he wants Congress to pass legislation that will stop U.S. companies from moving profits overseas for lower tax rates, formally known as corporate tax inversions. He said lawmakers must be "accountable for the current gridlock in Congress that prevents important legislation from being passed."

"In the last few years over 50 companies have left the country through 'inversions,' representing over half a trillion dollars in market value, hundreds of millions in tax dollars, and tens of thousands of jobs," he said. "If this exodus is allowed to accelerate, there will be disastrous consequences for our already fragile economy, as well as meaningful and unnecessary job losses."

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Koch brothers, the most powerful conservative mega donors in the United States, will not use their $400 million political arsenal to try to block Republican front-runner Donald Trump's path to the presidential nomination, a spokesman told Reuters on Wednesday.

The decision by the billionaire industrialists is another setback to Republican establishment efforts to derail the New York real estate mogul's bid for the White House, and follows speculation the Kochs would soon launch a "Trump Intervention."

"We have no plans to get involved in the primary," said James Davis, spokesman for Freedom Partners, the Koch brothers’ political umbrella group. He would not elaborate on what the brothers' strategy would be for the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

(CNN)Ben Carson doesn't "see a political path forward" in the Republican presidential nomination process, and will not attend Thursday's GOP presidential debate in his hometown of Detroit, he said in a statement.

But Carson stopped short of saying he was officially leaving the race.

Talk radio host and Fox News Channel anchor Sean Hannity declared a New York Timespiece about his position on immigration reform and the Gang of Eight was “a bold-faced lie” and added that he was “getting pissed off at [GOP presidential candidate Florida Senator] Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) too” over his performance during the debate and on the trail during his radio show on Monday.

Hannity began by talking about the NYT article. He stated that other talk radio hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and Laura Ingraham wouldn’t change their principled opinions on any issue. He further said that in 20 years at FNC he had never been told what position to take on a single issue, including immigration.

Hannity further stated that after the 2012 election, he did say “out of anger” and “off the cuff” that he had evolved on immigration, if there was border security first, a comment that he regrets. He added that he does not know of anyone who has done more to highlight the issue of illegal immigration than he has.

He further declared the NYT piece “categorically nothing but a bold-faced lie about me.” And said the piece’s author should have reached out to him first.

In his role as the donor class’s darling, Marco Rubio has enjoyed support from the Republicans’ media arm, Fox News. Throughout the primary, Fox provided Rubio with friendly interviews and key bookings, including the first prime-time response to Barack Obama’s Oval Office address on ISIS. Many of the network’s top pundits, including Stephen Hayes and Charles Krauthammer, have been enthusiastic boosters. Bill Sammon, Fox’s Washington managing editor, is the father of Rubio’s communications director, Brooke Sammon.

But this alliance now seems to be over. According to three Fox sources, Fox chief Roger Ailes has told people he’s lost confidence in Rubio’s ability to win. “We’re finished with Rubio,” Ailes recently told a Fox host. “We can’t do the Rubio thing anymore.”

On Breitbart News Sunday, American Disney IT worker Leo Perrero spoke out against one of the world’s largest mass media corporations, which forced him and other well-educated Americans out of their jobs and blackmailed them into training cheap, imported foreign workers without exposing the abuse of the H-1B visa program on pain of losing their severance packages.

Perrero described how the corporation, represented by beloved childhood icon Mickey Mouse, kicked an American father to the curb:

We were given 90 days notice by a prominent Disney executive that we were going to train our foreign replacements. If we didn’t do so, we wouldn’t receive our severance package. Over that 90-day period, they recorded everything we did with the audio and video on our computers, and right at the end, we were ushered out the door. And the foreign workers that were flowing in just weeks before took over our jobs, and we were long gone.

Is the liberal media trying to sabotage Trump? Follow us for a second on this one....

Buzzfeed's Ben Smith noted in his column today that Trump did a sitdown with the Times, presumably to pitch the paper for an endorsement. These meetings are both on and off the record. As Smith notes:

The New York Times is sitting on an audio recording that some of its staff believes could deal a serious blow to Donald Trump who, in an off-the-record meeting with the newspaper, called into question whether he would stand by his own immigration views.

Trump visited the paper’s Manhattan headquarters on Tuesday, Jan. 5, part of a round of editorial board meetings that — as is traditional — the Democratic candidates for president and some of the Republicans attended. The meetings, conducted partly on the record and partly off the record in a 13th floor conference room, give candidates a chance to make their pitch for the paper’s endorsement.

Republicans have not been competitive in New York for quite some time. In 2004, only three years after 9/11, eventual loser John Kerry beat George W. Bush by 18 points. In his two terms, Barack Obama easily eclipsed 60 percent of the vote, notably pounding Mitt Romney in the Empire State by over 30 points. In any election, New York represents a reliable 29 electoral votes for Democrats.

Confidential polling data shows Hillary Clinton could lose the presidential election in heavily Democratic New York to Donald Trump as the GOP front-runner’s support grows to the point of being “surprisingly strong,” The Post has learned.

The poll results, from Democratic and Republican legislative races, have surprised many leading Dems, virtually all of whom have endorsed Clinton, while confounding and energizing GOP leaders, many of whom until recently have been opposed to Trump.

“There are some Democrats who think that Hillary can be taken if Trump mounts a strong campaign,’’ one of the state’s most prominent Democrats said.

For as long as she's served under President Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch has been a dutiful ally, eager to defend and enact the most heinous courses of action the commander in chief has set upon. But as his lame duck presidency comes to a close, it seems like even she is abandoning him. As the Washington Times notes:

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Wednesday that federal law flatly prevents President Obama from sending the detainees from Guantanamo Bay to U.S. territory, hurting his ability to follow through on his new closure plan.

“That is the state of the law,” she said, pointing to the most recent defense policy law passed late last year, which cleared Congress on a bipartisan vote and which Mr. Obama himself signed into law.

Ms. Lynch said it’s her understanding the president’s plan, released Tuesday, is a “goal” and a challenge to Congress rather than an effort to circumvent lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

She said she supports the goal, saying the detention facility has become a security liability for the U.S.

The words of the movement “Black Lives Matter” is reminiscent to the rhetoric of 1930s Germany where only “Aryan Lives” mattered. Let’s be clear: This rhetorical comparison is not correlated to the actions of the two movements. Both quotes imply that other lives don’t matter.

In Pre-WWII Germany the bigoted rhetoric against those who were not Aryan including, but not limited to, Jews and the disabled, created a divide that led to genocide. Though America is not on that course (thankfully), the hateful rhetoric behind “Black Lives Matter” underscores Benjamin Franklin’s prophetic message: United we stand, divided we fall. This hateful rhetoric exemplifies the latter.

Lives Matter. History has not always been kind to Blacks and other minorities. Jews suffered through exiles, crusades, pogroms, and the Holocaust (included the discriminatory Nuremberg Laws). Blacks suffered through slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow laws, which promoted segregation.

The Mexican government has placed six states on high alert following the theft of a vehicle with radioactive material. That alert comes less than a year after Mexico had an almost identical case where authorities throughout most of southern Mexico spent days searching for the missing material.

The warning was issued on Sunday evening by Mexico’s Secretariat of the Interior, just one day after the theft of a commercial pickup that had been transporting industrial material, including a yellow container with a rod of Iridium-192.

The theft of the pickup took place on in the town of San Juan del Rio, Queretaro in the central part of Mexico. In response the Mexican government placed six central and southern states on heightened alert and deployed federal police forces to search for the stolen radioactive material.

As previously reported by Breitbart Texas, in April 2015, thieves stole another vehicle in central Mexico which had also been carrying a container with Iridium-192. In response to that theft, the Mexican government also kicked off a massive search for the equipment. That equipment turned up days later when the thieves left the container near a highway overpass.

The theft of trucks containing radioactive material happens more often that the Mexican government would like to admit.More

(Princess Anne, MD) – Two suspects have been arrested and charged in connection with the shooting incident in Somerset County on February 25, 2016.The first accused is identified as James Okoro, 20, of the 30000-block of UMES Boulevard in Princess Anne, MD who was arrested on February 26, 2016 on an arrest warrant obtained by Maryland State Police. The second accused is Calcius Agyemang-Asirifi, 22, of the 12000-block of Somerset Avenue in Princess Anne who was arrested on March 1, 2016 at his apartment, by UMES officers on a warrant obtained by the Maryland State Police. Okoro and Agyemang-Asirifi were both charged with attempted 1st degree murder, attempted 2nd degree murder, first degree assault and second degree assault. Both men have been arrested on arrest warrants and were transported to the Somerset County Detention Center.

Just before 5:00 p.m. on February 25, 2016, Maryland State troopers from the Princess Anne Barrack, along with officers from the Princess Anne Police Department and sheriff’s deputies from Somerset County Sheriff’s Department responded to the 12000-block of Somerset Avenue in Princess Anne for a report of shots fired. This call was placed by one of the victims.

The preliminary investigation revealed the victims had an altercation with an unknown person early in the day. As time elapsed the victims attempted to leave the area where the altercation initiated. The victims attempted to leave in a black and tan Lincoln Town Car southbound on Somerset Avenue. A burgundy Chevrolet Tahoe that through investigation revealed Okoro was given permission to be in possession of, traveling northbound, crossed the center line and struck the Lincoln Town car head on. At the time of the crash, four men reportedly exited the Tahoe.

Police believe at least two shots were fired into the victim’s vehicle after the crash. Both victims were able to exit their vehicle, run for shelter and escape unharmed. Four suspects reportedly fled the scene in the Tahoe which was found abandoned at Loretto Road in Princess Anne.

Two of the four reported suspects have been taken into custody. Okoro was taken into custody by state troopers at the UMES Police Department as he inquired about obtaining the burgundy Tahoe. Agyemang-Asirifi was arrested at his apartment by UMES Police officers, on an arrest warrant obtained by the Maryland State Police. The search continues for two additional suspects who are unidentified at this time. A firearm has not been recovered at this time.

State Police investigators have received some leads and information, but are hoping others with information will come forward. Callers may remain anonymous. Anyone with information is urged to contact the Maryland State Police Princess Anne Barrack at (443) 260-3700. This investigation is still active and ongoing.

Iranian officials withheld travel visas from three House Republicans who wished to observe the regime's elections over the weekend.

"It's unfortunate that Iran has not yet granted our request for visas to observe Iran's election and for other productive purposes," Rep. Frank LoBiondo, chairman of the House subcommittee on the CIA, said on Monday.

The New Jersey Republican and two other lawmakers applied for visas in early February, and told the Iranian government they wanted to observe the country's elections, meet with Americans detained in the country, and inquire about implementation of the recent nuclear deal that Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated. But the election, which took place Saturday, came and went without the visas being granted.

"The American people and rest of the free world still deserve first hand confirmation of what present day reality is in Iran," Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., said Monday. "I look forward to Iran showing that it is a partner in peace by issuing our visas so that we can meet with Iranian leadership, visit nuclear sites, and meet with American hostages."

A large police presence was called to a school in the Hill District Monday morning.

According to officials at the scene, a large fight broke out inside the University Prep School around 10 a.m.

According to Pittsburgh Public Schools spokeswoman Ebony Pugh, the fight was the result of a neighborhood rivalry. The victim said she was jumped in the hallway. It escalated to about 30 girls being involved in total and involved screaming, kicking and punches being thrown.

Initially, officials believed the fight started with two girls arguing over a boy.

One girl was taken to the hospital with a minor injury.

9th grader Amina Morris said she was attacked in the hallway.

“I was in the corner, and they started hitting me, so my friends came in,” She said. “This is a school where you gotta fight, you just gotta fight.”

(CNSNews.com) - The Senate will take up a bipartisan bill addressing the nation's growing demand for painkillers and heroin, but not the easy supply coming in from Mexico and points south.

The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 (S.524), introduced by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), states that "The abuse of heroin and prescription pain-killers is having a devastating effect on public health and safety in communities across the United States."

Although the bill briefly mentions "Mexican drug trafficking organizations" as one explanation for the epidemic, it does not address ways to choke off the supply. Instead, it authorizes hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to address the demand-side of the problem.

In addition to treatment programs, the bill addresses the negative fallout for those who abuse drugs. For example, the bill would establish treatment programs as alternatives to prison; and it expands the use of naloxone to save heroin overdose victims.

Just last week, in testimony before the House intelligence committee, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper specifically mentioned "drug trafficking" among the threats facing the United States.More

Abstinence is the only 100 percent effective method for avoiding unintended pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) including HIV, Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) said Thursday, adding that it was “essential that our young people learn the risks and consequences of their choices.”

Speaking at a Capitol Hill briefing promoting “sexual risk avoidance” (SRA), or abstinence-based education, in schools, Pitts called for more funding.

“We may live in a culture that seeks instant gratification today but it is essential that our young people learn the risks and consequences of their choices,” he said.

“They must learn that sexuality is sacred and that it entails awesome responsibility of creating new human beings.”

“Government can’t love you, nothing can replace the solid foundation of the family’s unconditional love and support,” he continued. “Children who grow up without that are vulnerable to seeking conditional love, false love from all the wrong places.”

He added that “over one third of US children live with a single parent, the highest proportion among all developed countries.”More

(CNSNews.com) – A group of United Nations’ member-states on Thursday elected the Assad regime to a leadership post of a special committee dealing with decolonization, sparking protests from a human rights group that had earlier urged U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon to intervene.

At a meeting in New York, the committee’s newly-elected chairman, Venezuelan ambassador Rafael Ramirez, asked the member-states whether there were any objections to putting forward Syrian ambassador Bashar Ja’afari as its “rapporteur” for the coming year.

Hearing no objectives, Ramirez declared Ja’afari – as well as three nominated vice chairmen, the representatives of Cuba, Sierra Leone and Indonesia – “elected by acclamation.”

Senators Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) introduced a bill that would “ensure a prompt return of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) who illegally cross the southern border” after their numbers more than doubled during the first four months of the current fiscal year.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, there was a 102 percent increase in the number of unaccompanied alien children (20,455) who were apprehended at the southwest border between Oct. 1, 2015 and Jan. 31, 2016 compared to 10,105 apprehended during the same time period in FY2015.

However, less than four percent (4,680) of the 127,193 UACs who have been caught illegally entering the U.S. over the past two and a half years have been sent back home because the vast majority do not show up for their deportation hearings, Sessions noted during a Judiciary Committee hearing held earlier this week.

“Nobody’s looking for them. The system is not working. All you have to do is just come into the country unlawfully, be released into the country, and if you don’t show up for court, you’re never looked for and deported,” the senator pointed out.

The Protection of Children Act of 2016 (S.2561) “amends the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 to provide expedited processing for unaccompanied alien children who are not victims of a severe form of trafficking in persons and who do not have a fear of returning to their country of nationality or last habitual residence,” according to a press release from Sessions’ office.

Last Friday, after being pummeled in the 10th GOP primary debate, Donald Trump demonstrated once again that he is the undisputed media master. As the mainstream media (MSM) prepared to devote the day's news to the beating Trump took from Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz (both of whom defeat Trump head-to-head), the most "establishment" of establishment candidates stepped up to endorse Trump.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose own campaign fell flat, joined Trump at a rally and threw his weight behind the pro-promoter, effectively diverting attention from the previous night's debate.

Christie, in an opportunistic bid for an attorney general appointment, declared, "Always beware of the candidate for public office who has the quick and easy answer to a complicated problem. ... I just don't think that [Trump] is suited to be president of the United States. ... We do not need reality TV in the Oval Office right now. [The presidency] is not a place for an entertainer. ... Showtime is over. We are not electing an entertainer-in-chief. ... [If you vote for Trump] we could wind up turning over the White House to Hillary Clinton for four more years."

Wait, that's what Christie said before he endorsed Trump. But now he has pledged allegiance to Trump, declaring, "The best person to beat Hillary Clinton in November ... is undoubtedly Donald Trump."

"Undoubtedly"? Reputable polls consistently show Trump to be the only remaining Republican candidate who loses to Hillary in a head-to-head matchup.

Trump knows how to work the media as well as he does a crowd. But as I wrote in "The Trump Freight Train," Caveat Emptor: "Virtually none of his adoring media has devoted any bandwidth challenging Trump's long list of prevarications — at least not yet. And the list keeps growing. If Trump sews up the Republican nomination, the mainstream media will stop appeasing and start tearing him apart ahead of the general election — they will eviscerate him. And there is so much to hang around Trump's neck that the barrage will be relentless until the last general election vote is cast."

Mark my words: There's a bottomless pit of Trump material that hasn't YET been aired, and Democrat opposition research teams will hand it all over to their MSM enablers as soon as Trump wraps up the Republican nomination.

If there’s one thing the current election cycle has made clear, it’s the reality that millions of Americans feel utterly disenfranchised. Their anger and frustration are driven by the daunting realization that neither political party represents their interests. This despicable status quo begs the simplest question, one every candidate running for elective office in 2016 should be forced to answer:

Who speaks for us?

We want to live in a nation where there is a clear understanding of right and wrong, not one dominated by the “anything goes” cultural sewage churned out on a regular basis by Hollywood and the mainstream media. Who speaks for us?

We want to live in a nation that puts Americans first — one with definable, enforceable borders and one where Rule of Law is paramount — not one that gratifies the desires of millions of illegals and their cadre of elitist supporters aiming to fundamentally transform our national character, using cheap votes and cheap labor to do so. Who speaks for us?

We want to live in a nation where we no longer cater to the lowest common denominator of human behavior to accommodate “root causes,” the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” or a multi-culturalist mishmash that excuses misogyny, anti-Semitism, and racism under the rubric of “celebrating our differences.” Who speaks for us?

We want to live a nation with an educational system that teaches children how to think, not what to think. A system where ideological indoctrination social promotion, grade inflation, worthless diplomas, “creative” math, and the generalized dumbing-down of vulnerable children is tossed on the ash heap of history. Who speaks for us?

We want to live in a nation where merit and excellence matter, not one where millions of “snowflakes” have been cushioned by trigger warnings, micro-aggressions, speech codes and helicopter parents who believe everyone should get a trophy just for showing up. A nation where the content of one’s character is far more important than the color of one’s skin, one’s gender, one’s sexual orientation, or one’s membership in a particular grievance group. Who speaks for us?

Melania Trump told CNN she disagrees with her husband Donald's use of vulgar language on the campaign trail — especially when he repeated the word a woman in a crowd called Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

"I don't try to change him. He's an adult. He knows the consequences, and so I let him be who he is," Trump said in a preview of the interview with Anderson Cooper set to air Monday night. "I give him my opinions, many, many times."

When asked by Cooper an example of something she disagrees with the GOP presidential front-runner on, Trump cited his salty language.

The Maryland Senate is scheduled to consider a bill on Tuesday that would clamp down on when public buses and trains can record the private conversations of their passengers.

“What [the Maryland Transit Administration] is doing is a mass surveillance,” said Sen. Robert A. Zirkin (D-Baltimore County), chair of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, which unanimously voted for the measure to move to the Senate floor.

“I find it outrageous,” Zirkin said. “I don’t want to overstate it, but this is the issue of our generation. As technology advances, it becomes easier and easier to encroach on people’s civil liberties.”

While Zirkin and other proponents argue that the technology, which has been in use since 2012, is an infringement on civil liberties, the bill’s opponents say the recordings are a necessary tool for homeland security.

It’s time to replace the inspector general at the Department of Veterans Affairs. It’s been two years and the office has not released its full investigation into the 2014 wait-time scandal in which veterans were placed on secret waiting lists — and some of them died waiting.

After it came out that the Phoenix VA had manipulated its scheduling, the VA’s Office of Inspector General launched an investigation into 73 other VA locations. With months left in the Obama administration, it seems like the IG is running out the clock, delaying the release of the report to Congress in order to protect the agency from punishment.

Rep. John Carney told USA Today, “I’m outraged that we still haven’t received the inspector general’s report.More

African Americans have been marginalized in the agricultural industry too.

The teens who work at Soul Fire Farmin Grafton, New York, aren’t your typical field hands. They aren’t just there for a paycheck or because they love working the land—but to avoid incarceration. As part of Soul Fire’s restorative justice program, Project Growth, juvenile offenders work with the farm and other area nonprofits, learning marketable skills and earning money to pay restitution for their crimes.

While weeding may appear to be a better option than jail, one young man who opted for farmwork over incarceration didn’t have especially high hopes for the 50 hours he had to spend at Soul Fire.

“I basically expected it to be like slavery, but it would be better than jail,” Asan told Yes! Magazine. “It was different though. We got paid and we got to bring food home. The farmers there are black like us, which I did not expect.”

The chief operating officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told a House committee last week that 8 of the 11 remaining Obamacare co-ops in the nation are "being monitored closely" for "corrective action plans," the Washington Free Beacon reports.

Dr. Mandy Cohen told the House Oversight and Government Reform committee that such "enhanced oversight" occurs when a co-op develops issues with finances, operations, compliance or management processes.

"CMS was aware of this, that almost all of the co-ops incurred losses in 2014," Rep. Buddy Carter, Georgia Republican, said to Cohen at the hearing, the Free Beacon reports.

"If you were aware of that and some were already shutting down why did you continue to award the taxpayer dollars in loans?"More

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department on Monday released the 14th and final batch of emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private server, bringing the total to more than 52,000 including 2,100 that were censored or withheld completely for containing information now deemed classified.

In releasing the final batch of 3,800 documents, the department also settled a long-running dispute over one sensitive email as intelligence agencies dropped a months-long demand an exchange on North Korea's nuclear program to be designated "top secret," the highest level of classification. The State Department, which had insisted the information was not classified at all, partially won its battle over the document as the intelligence community revised its initial assessment and determined the information was "secret," the next lower classification.

Reports documenting scheduling problems and wait-time manipulation at the Department of Veterans Affairs are being made public, as the agency's internal watchdog bows to pressure from members of Congress and others to improve transparency.

The VA's Office of Inspector General released 11 reports Monday outlining problems at VA hospitals and clinics in Florida. The reports are the first of 77 investigations to be made public over the next few months.

The reports detail chronic delays for veterans seeking medical care and falsified records covering up the long waits. Intentional misconduct was substantiated in 51 of 77 completed investigations.

A scandal over veterans' health care emerged in Phoenix nearly two years ago following complaints that as many as 40 patients died while awaiting care at the city's VA hospital.

A 2014 report by the inspector general's office said workers at the Phoenix hospital falsified waiting lists while their supervisors looked the other way or even directed it, resulting in chronic delays for veterans seeking care. Similar problems were discovered at VA medical centers nationwide, affecting thousands of veterans and prompting an outcry in Congress that continues as lawmakers and agency leaders struggle over how to improve the VA.

Lawmakers have directed some of their ire at the inspector general's office, saying the agency's acting chief has not moved fast enough to make its reports public.

Tennessee Rep. Diane Black is calling for a return of the $750 million paid out through the Affordable Care Act to people who's legal immigration status has not been verified.

Black told Newsmax TV on Monday she also had a bill in the previous Congress that would have demanded "no subsidies without verification."

"We should not be giving these subsidies out even for the 90 days that are provided in the law until we know for sure that they are here in this country legally, because you do not get that money back," Black told John Bachman on "Newsmax Prime."

"This is not a good spending of our … taxpayers' dollars," she said. "They're hard enough to come by, and taxpayers are working hard and we shouldn't be giving those to illegal immigrants."

The Government Accountability Office issued a report last week saying the Obama administration has had a "passive approach to identifying and preventing fraud" implementing the Affordable Care Act. More

Can’t remember the last time you hit the gym or had a healthy, balanced meal? Could be it’s not just a coincidence.

University of Cambridge researchers have found that overweight people have poorer episodic memory — the ability to recall past events — than their normal-weight peers.The findings, published in The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, add to increasing evidence of a link between memory, obesity, and overeating.

The researchers suggest their work suggests excess body weight may be associated with changes to the structure and function of the brain and its ability to perform certain cognitive tasks optimally.

In particular, obesity has been linked with dysfunction of the hippocampus, an area of the brain involved in memory and learning, and of the frontal lobe, the part of the brain involved in decision making, problem solving, and emotions.

"Understanding what drives our consumption and how we instinctively regulate our eating behavior is becoming more and more important given the rise of obesity in society," said Dr. Lucy Cheke. "We know that to some extent hunger and satiety are driven by the balance of hormones in our bodies and brains, but psychological factors also play an important role — we tend to eat more when distracted by television or working, and perhaps to 'comfort eat' when we are sad, for example.More here

Hillary Clinton never actually met the official requirements to obtain a security clearance to handle classified information, according to a growing body of evidence.

“That is exactly the conclusion here based on the evidence,” former Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Michael Steele told Breitbart News.

“The process is the process. The protocols are the protocols,” Steele said, noting that when you look at internal State Department evidence “this [conclusion] is where you’ll end up.”

Steele called the evidence presented here below “a case that everyone is going to have to pay attention to.”

When Hillary Clinton started her career at the State Department, she was required to sign a “Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement,” otherwise known as an SF-312, vowing to give back classified materials when she left the agency. Clinton signed that form in January 2009.

But if you look at the copy of the document that the State Department released, you will find something very jarring: No one from the State Department signed it.

After winning two states Tuesday night, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called on his Republican rivals to "prayerfully consider" exiting the 2016 presidential race in order to help him defeat Donald Trump.

Cruz touted the fact that his campaign was the only one yet to defeat Trump, including projected victories in Texas and Oklahoma on Tuesday.

"Tomorrow morning we have a choice," he told supporters in his home state, which he won. "So long as the field remains divided, Donald Trump's path to the nomination remains more likely and that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives and for the nation."

"Republicans, together we have a choice. We are blessed with a deep and talented, honorable field," he added. "For the candidates who've not yet won a state, who've not racked up significant delegates, I ask you to prayerfully consider our coming together, uniting. For those who have supported other candidates, we welcome you on our team standing united as one. That is the only way to beat Donald Trump. Head to head, our campaign beats Donald Trump resoundingly, but for that to happen we must come together."

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) wants the immigration history of Mohamed Barry, the Guinea national who attacked diners at an Ohio restaurant with a machete earlier this month.

Barry was shot and killed by police shortly thereafter.

“Media reports indicate that Barry entered the restaurant looking for the owner, an Israeli immigrant, who was not present,” Goodlatte wrote in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Sec. Jeh Johnson Monday. “Barry returned later in the evening wielding a machete and yelled, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ before beginning his rampage, hacking and slashing people as they ate in the restaurant.”

The FBI is investigating the attack as possible terrorism.

Barry is dead. However, according to Goodlatte, how he was granted access to the U.S. and remained here in spite of an FBI investigation of him four years ago over his radical Islamic views — is pertinent.

“Based on the available evidence, Barry’s savagery bears the hallmarks of a terrorist attack,” he wrote in his letter. “Terrorism and the threat of terrorist violence remain very real concerns to Americans. In light of the fact that Barry was a resident alien, who was known to federal law enforcement as a result of his radical Islamic views, it is unclear whether the Department of Homeland Security took all appropriate actions to ensure the safety and security of the American public.”More

After Federal and Local Partners Meet Key Administration Benchmarks, State Selects Purple Line Transit Partners to Deliver New Rail Line $550 Million Below Estimates

ANNAPOLIS, MD – Governor Larry Hogan today instructed the Maryland Department of Transportation to move forward with the long-awaited Purple Line light rail project, which when completed will run from New Carrollton to Bethesda. After a full and thorough competitive bid process, the administration has selected Purple Line Transit Partners for the 16.2-mile-long transit system in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties.

As defined in the governor’s original announcement in June 2015, the Maryland Department of Transportation has met the three criteria outlined for final approval of the Purple Line: additional financial support from local governments, reserved federal funding, and aggressive pricing from the successful team.

“After eight months of hard work and tough negotiating, the Maryland Department of Transportation has met all three of the needed requirements and delivered a cost-effective Purple Line with a strong commitment from our federal, county and private partners,” said Governor Hogan.

The president of Ministers Taking a Stand – a national organization of Pastors and Christian leaders addressing moral and spiritual issues in American culture – is calling on the black community to sever its relationship with the “anti-Christian” Democrat Party as the 2016 election looms.

Bishop E.W. Jackson says that black Christians should not continue its relationship with a Democrat Party that is increasingly hostile to Christianity.

“Four years ago I released a video called EXODUS NOW, calling black Christians to come out of the Democrat Party,” Jackson says in the video. “When I did that video there was no gay marriage. Now we have it, and the Democrat Party is mainly responsible. I am back to say once again, come out!”

Jackson – a graduate of both Harvard Law School and Harvard Divinity School – urges black voters to oppose Democrats on the issues of marriage and abortion.

“Why has the Democrat Party embraced gay marriage when black voters believe in the biblical definition of marriage?” he asks. “Why does the Democrat Party avidly support Planned Parenthood when they know its founder, Margaret Sanger, was a racist eugenicist who wanted to stop the growth of the black population?”

Last summer, Jackson led a campaign to have a bust of Margaret Sanger removed from the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution.

Denmark is once again distinguishing itself in the race against food waste — this time, with a supermarket hawking items once destined for the trash bin.

Those items might include treats for a holiday that happened last week, a ripped box of cornflakes, plain white rice mislabeled as basmati, or anything nearing its expiration date. In other words, perfectly edible items that are nonetheless considered unfit for sale by the retailers and manufacturers who donate them.

WeFood is not the first grocer in Europe to sell surplus food. But unlike so-called "social supermarkets" – stores which serve almost exclusively low-income people — WeFood's offerings are very intentionally aimed at the general public.

"If you call it a 'social supermarket,' it's difficult to get customers to go there. Who wants to be poor?" explains Per Bjerre with DanChurchAid, the charity behind this initiative. "If you want to stop [the] waste of food, everybody has to be into it."

When considering the cause of national apathy, Americans are evidently physiologically and socially similar to the junk food addled laboratory rat. Both tolerate repressive environments while confined against their will in a maze. In the natural desire to escape and find freedom, like the affected rat,Americans passively accept their confinement, acquiescing without struggle to a life of controlled stimulation and manipulation by all manner of drugs, tests, and mandated choice of direction. In a country objectively descending into chaos, why don’t Americans care? In recent studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), these same rats evidence one reason for America’s irrational disinterest in self-preservation.

In ever-more-frequent and growing worldwide protests, resistance to the American empire’s imposed maze increases. Strangely, Americans offer no similar resistance at all. The social, economic, and political problems in the USA mirror those of an empire-afflicted world, yet in the “exceptional” nation most would rather chew off their tails than find the energy to extricate themselves from their maze.Examples of exceptionally paltry public resistance and protest abound. Rarely does an American protest amount to more than a few hundred temporarily outraged souls who then quickly return to their couches when told to do so by the well-armed militia of the government they came into the streets to change.

Why is America the isolated case study of this strange domestic malady that may best be summed-up as: clinical, terminal apathy?

Monday on Fox News Channel’s “Outnumbered,” while discussing the possibility of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton being indicted as a result of the current FBI investigation into her handling of classified material on an unsecured email server during her tenure as secretary of state, Fox News senior political contributor Brit Hume said there were enough questions about the circumstances of Clinton’s case that an indictment isn’t a slam dunk.

Partial transcript as follows:

HUME: Worth remembering, David Petraeus was convicted of a misdemeanor. Now that was bargained down no doubt. But if you look at—I read various legal analyses of these—and a good case can be made there is an indictable felony here, and very good case can also be made there is not. My guess is that she won’t be indicted.

HARRIS: Agreed.

HUME: Think about this for a minute. If you come down to it, and she is nominated by one of the major parties, and you have not a huge case, and you don’t have any criminal intent, are you going to indict? Is it wise to indict a nominee of a major party? Is that the right way to do it? Is that the right thing to do?

Were you wondering what Alan Greenspan thinks about the outlook for monetary policy across the globe?

Neither were we, but Bloomberg was and Tom Keene and Mike McKee got the “privilege” of sitting down with the “maestro” on Monday afternoon to discuss a variety of topics including NIRP, which Greenspan says “warps investment behavior.”

While he isn’t willing to go so far as to condemn negative rates as “dangerous,” he does say the global race to the proverbial Keynesian bottom is “counterproductive.”

As far as the US economy is concerned, Greenspan isn’t optimistic. “We’re in trouble basically because productivity is dead in the water…Real capital investment is way below average. Why? Because business people are very uncertain about the future.”

Well yes, they most certainly are. Of course were it not for “the Greenspan put” and decades of policy largesse we might not have ever had a financial crisis in the first place (David Stockman will tell you all about Greenspan’s role in creating the conditions we now find ourselves in).

A Bible and Bible verse were removed from a POW/MIA display inside an Ohio Veteran’s Administration clinic after the notorious Military Religious Freedom Foundation complained.

The religious artifacts were part of a “Missing Man Table” recently erected by volunteers at an outpatient clinic in Akron.

MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein alleged the inclusion of the Bible was a violation of the U.S. Constitution. He said he intervened at the request of nearly a dozen, mostly Christian, military veterans who utilize the clinic.

However, clinic administrator Brian Reinhart said to his knowledge no one ever complained.

In other words, Mr. Weinstein’s allegations are a bit dubious.

Nevertheless, Reinhart relented and evicted God’s Word from the display.

“I just wanted to let you know that the Bible has been removed from our POW table and the Bible verse has been removed from the framed scripture,” Reinhart wrote in an email to Weinstein.

To say that Weinstein was giddy over the desecration of such a moving tribute would be an understatement.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A self-driving car being tested by Google struck a public bus on a Silicon Valley street, a fender-bender that appears to be the first time one of the tech company's vehicles caused an accident during testing on city roads.

Google accepted some responsibility for the collision, which occurred on Valentine's Day when one of the Lexus SUVs it has outfitted with sensors and cameras hit the side of the bus. No one was injured, according to an accident report Google wrote and submitted to California's Department of Motor Vehicles.

The man hired to help ease racial tensions at University of Missouri had tough love for the African-American activists who led fierce demonstrations there last fall, telling them late last week he has no intention of caving in to their demands.

Interim Vice Chancellor Chuck Henson, whose portfolio includes inclusion, diversity and equity, wrote a letter to Concerned Student 1950 Thursday, telling the group to stop making demands and work with the school to make things better.

"If you sincerely want better relationships, the time for demands, threats and arbitrary deadlines is over — you don't need them," Henson wrote.

Demands from the group, which takes its name from the 1950 admission of the school’s first black student, Gus Ridgel, include an “academic bankruptcy program” in which students could delete one bad semester’s grades from their records, according to The College Fix. Other demands include the hiring of more black faculty, $250,000 to expand the Black Cultural Center with a “Liberation House,” and a statue of civil rights activist Lloyd Gaines in the Carnahan Quadrangle.Read more

Marcomentum was supposed to be upon us. The Florida Senator was expected to challenge Donald Trump in Virginia and Oklahoma and start building momentum heading into his home state primary in Florida.

But it never happened. Last night the establishment favorite one won state- Minnesota. Meanwhile, his rival for the right to challenge Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, won primaries in Oklahoma and in the delegate rich state of Texas.

So what now?

For weeks, Rubio's supporters have been urging Ted Cruz, who they say has no path to victory, to drop out of the race in the interest of the party. Now that the chips are down, will the Florida Senator do the same?

A teacher in South Carolina resigned after a student took a nude picture from her phone and sent it to friends through texts and social media, officials said Monday.

The Union County Career and Technology Center teacher, Leigh Anne Arthur, said the photo was meant for her husband, according to WYFF. She told reporters, "The student who actually took my phone and took pictures turned around and told me, 'your day of reckoning is coming.'"

Clinton once described Senator who called blacks "mongrels" as her "friend and mentor"

While the media has attempted to smear Donald Trump after he was endorsed by former Ku Klux Klan member David Duke, Hillary Clinton has escaped scrutiny despite the fact that she once praised ex-KKK member Robert Byrd as her “friend and mentor”.

The press has attempted to keep Trump on the ropes over the past few days, demanding over and over again that he “disavow” any connection with Duke, despite Trump claiming he had not even heard about the endorsement.

This distraction was invoked over and over again to bolster the narrative that Trump is appealing to racist voters.

However, Hillary has managed to avoid similar treatment despite her glowing praise for former Senator Robert Byrd, who joined the KKK when he was 24-years-old because he didn’t want to fight alongside “race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds,” during World War II.

Game over! This was a rout, America. Winning seven states and the vast majority of delegates is a landslide. Donald Trump and the millions of his supporters have changed American politics and the Republican Party for the foreseeable future.

The nomination is within his grasp and if he does what he said he would do Tuesday night: "[I will] be a unifier!" he may be a very viable candidate against Hillary Clinton in the fall.

After his victories Tuesday night in multiple states and his second place finish in others , Trump is in an unstoppable position. Whether the junior senators from Texas and Florida choose to pursue him, it doesn’t matter, the end is near.

Trump, who is an unconventional candidate, to say the least, has tapped into the anger and frustration across America and has mobilized voters to turn out in record numbers.

Love him or hate him, be inspired by him or be appalled by him, Trump has totally dominated a political cycle like no other politician I’ve seen in decades.

SPIELFELD, Austria/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – On the Austrian-Slovenia border, one of the last stops on the migrant route to Germany, a policeman explains that after his 12-hour shift taking new arrivals’ fingerprints, most are lost minutes after they are taken.

“We are not allowed to save the fingerprints,” the Austrian policeman, who wanted to remain anonymous, said as he sat in a tent at the Spielfeld border crossing. “We do what we’re asked to do.”

Austria, which saw 700,000 migrants crossing its borders last year, says it is not legally allowed to save and share with other European states more than 90 percent of the fingerprint data it takes of migrants fleeing war and poverty, a potential security problem at a major migrant hub.

It is only required to upload onto Europe’s shared fingerprint database, Eurodac, the data of those who actually apply for asylum in the country, which is less than 10 percent of those crossing into Austria.

So who’s the fattest cat in the federal Thrift Savings Plan? Does the fed with the $4.6 million account sit in the next cubicle? Or is he/she maybe a member of your car pool? Short answer: Probably not. Almost certainly not. But he/she is out there. Along with a growing number of TSP millionaires.

As of last January the TSP, Uncle Sam’s in-house 401k plan, had 3,272 people with accounts of $1 million or more. ONE MILLION DOLLARS!!!!

Some members of the Million Dollar Club came into government with lots of money. They are often political appointees or very successful lawyers appointed as federal judges. They transferred savings from company or corporate 401k funds into the TSP, often because they appreciated its lowest-in-the-business administrative fees. These are people who know how to make, and keep, money. But a substantial number of the millionaires did it the old-fashioned way. They invested in stock index funds, smiling when the market was up but continuing to buy stocks when the markets were down, and shares were on sale. Investing regularly, without getting emotional, and the value of compounding made them millionaires. The typical TSP millionaire has been investing for just over 28 years.

The 5 percent matching contributions that FERS employees can get from the government helped boost their TSP balances dramatically. Like so:

There are 18,846 TSP participants who have account balances of between $750,000 and $999,000 as of Jan. 2016. On average they’ve been investing for 28 years, like the millionaires they aspire to be.

More than 90,000 feds (92,092 to be precise) have account balances of between half a million and $749,000. Average time in the TSP: 27 years.

The number of participants with account balances from $250,000 to $499,000 is an impressive 371,209 individuals who’ve been in the federal 401k plan an average of 24 years.

The A-10s of the 104th Fighter Squadron, Baltimore, Maryland Air National Guard will be conducting some low level training Friday mid morning and afternoon as well as mid-day Saturday, vicinity of the following communities: Vienna, Mardela Springs, Nanticoke, Mt Vernon, Deale Island, Dames Quarter, Chance, Oriole, Venton, Upper Hill, Upper Fairmont, Fairmont, Rumbly, and Marion Station. Airspace has been coordinated with the FAA, and we will mitigate the impact to residents on the ground by avoiding populated areas and adhering to all FAA and US Air Force regulations.

We are very grateful to have the opportunity to use this airspace and would like to continue doing so. Again, we will make every effect to mitigate the impact on our fellow MD residents.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The IRS said Friday that the number of taxpayers whose tax information may have been stolen by computer hackers now exceeds 700,000 — more than double the agency’s previous estimate.

The tax collecting agency said 390,000 more taxpayer accounts may have compromised than the 334,000 it warned about a year and a half ago. The breach was first discovered in May 2015, and the increase first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The sensitive information can be used for identity theft or to claim fraudulent tax refunds.

The thieves accessed a system called “Get Transcript,” where taxpayers can get tax returns and other filings from previous years. In order to access the information, the thieves cleared a security screen that required knowledge about the taxpayer.

We’ve written several times now on the big battle brewing between the federal government and tech giant Apple.

This is a major case … featuring some tall tales being told by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is trying to force Apple to provide it with a universal encryption key capable of unlocking all iPhones, iPads and iPods.

As lovers of liberty, we adamantly oppose the government’s effort to bypass such a fundamental privacy protection …

So does U.S. magistrate judge James Orenstein of New York – who ruled against the government this week in a similar case involving efforts to compel Apple to “assist” another criminal investigation.

When Thomas Jefferson saw there was no negotiating with Muslims, he formed what is now the Marines (sea going soldiers). These Marines were attached to U. S. Merchant vessels. When the Muslims attacked U.S. merchant vessels they were repulsed by armed soldiers, but there is more.

The Marines followed the Muslims back to their villages and killed every man, woman, and child in the village.

It didn't take long for the Muslims to leave U.S. Merchant vessels alone.

English and French merchant vessels started running up our flag when entering the Mediterranean to secure safe travel.

Why the Marine Hymn contains the verse, "To the Shores of Tripoli".

This is very interesting and a must read piece of our history. It points out where we may be heading.

Most Americans are unaware of the fact that over two hundred years ago the United States had declared war on Islam, and Thomas Jefferson led the charge!

At the height of the 18th century, Muslim pirates (the "Barbary Pirates") were the terror of the Mediterranean and a large area of the North Atlantic. They attacked every ship in sight, and held the crews for exorbitant ransoms. Those taken hostage were subjected to barbaric treatment and wrote heart-breaking letters home, begging their governments and families to pay whatever their Mohammedan captors demanded.

These extortionists of the high seas represented the North African Islamic nations of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers - collectively referred to as the Barbary Coast - and presented a dangerous and unprovoked threat to the new American Republic.

Before the Revolutionary War, U.S. merchant ships had been under the protection of Great Britain. When the U.S. declared its independence and entered into war, the ships of the United States were protected by France.

However, once the war was won, America had to protect its own fleets.

Thus, the birth of the U.S. Navy. Beginning in 1784, 17 years before he would become president, Thomas Jefferson became America's Minister to France. That same year, the U.S. Congress sought to appease its Muslim adversaries by following in the footsteps of European nations who paid bribes to the Barbary States rather than engaging them in war.

In July of 1785, Algerian pirates captured American ships, and the Dye of Algiers demanded an unheard-of ransom of $60,000. It was a plain and simple case of extortion, and Thomas Jefferson was vehemently opposed to any further payments.